Podcast

A Journey of Faith and Resilience: Sheila Preston Fitzgerald

Sheila: [00:00:00] Lord, if I’m paralyzed. Take me now. Don’t do this to mama and daddy. They’ve got enough. It was hard on them with my little brother, please don’t do this. And as I finished my prayer, I felt a touch on my right forearm.

Sheila: It was just calm and peace. And I also felt as if I was being cradled in the lap of, the Lord. I look over and I look up into the most incredible face. I’ll never forget the eyes. And I’m looking at Jesus. I’m looking at my Lord and Savior,

Welcome to the Unshakable whole podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these [00:01:00] conversations.

Kelly: Hey friends. Today’s story is full of God’s miraculous care. My guest says she lives every day like it’s a miracle because she knows it truly is. You’ll be hearing today from Sheila Preston Fitzgerald. She’s a speaker, author, and calls herself a tragedy. Coach Sheila is alive today only by the grace of God. She had a near death motorcycle accident that should have taken her life, but instead filled this godly woman with a passion larger than life at.

Kelly: Self. Sheila’s love of people, her love of life, and most importantly, her love of Jesus radiates. In all she does. Her miraculous testimony of redemptive healing from the inside out will feel your heart with hope. But more than anything, these are stories that will lift your heart to our savior Jesus,

Kelly: with more than a decade of recovery from horrific [00:02:00] trauma that have affected every aspect of her life. Sheila uses her vast personal experience to come alongside people and coach them through trauma and adversity.

Kelly: She says, with Jesus, you truly can live a life of hope and joy. So we’re gonna be drawing from her book, one Foot in Heaven, finding Hope in the Hopeless. Sheila, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show

Sheila: Thank you, dear. I’m grateful to be here, and I’m grateful for you. I love what you do with Unshakeable Hope this is awesome.

Kelly: Oh, thank you. Well, Sheila, you have this huge story and I want you to know that I’m also a physical therapist and I specialized in rehab. And so I’ve worked with a lot of people who have had traumatic injuries and have had amputations,

Kelly: over the years, and maybe that’s why I understood so much of your story, but it just blew me away. I don’t know that I’ve ever known anyone [00:03:00] who has had this much trauma so here’s what I’ll have you do.

Kelly: The way Jesus has met you all through this journey blows my mind. So let’s just start with the accident that changed your life forever.

Sheila: Well, thank you for what you have done. Thank you for not only this podcast, but thank you for your service to the medical industry because there’s so many that were surrounding me through many years and even.

Sheila: Still, I have an incredible team that helps me, helps my body to physically continue to function.

Sheila: So, it was a beautiful fall night. I was riding my, driving my motorcycle and my husband was on his and he was behind me, not on mine, but on his own behind me.

Sheila: And I approached an intersection oh, by the way. I grew up riding dirt bikes, so very familiar with the concept, and we rode all the time. I enjoyed it. Did everything according to the law. Did everything, like I was dressed in [00:04:00] leather from head to toe, had a big helmet on big chin guard. I was a.

Sheila: Respectful rider. So anyway we were headed home one night and I was in front, he was behind me and I approached an intersection and I saw ahead of me a large SUV and they. Turned in front of me. I looked down at my throttle just to see if I was speeding. I was not, but I let off the throttle so that they could complete the turn.

Sheila: Unfortunately, there was a four door sedan right behind them, and they either didn’t see me, wasn’t paying attention, I’m not sure, but they just, they failed to yield, so they crossed in front of me, and when they did for an instant, I thought, I’m gonna lay my bike down, because that’s. Typically what you do is to skid into an accident or to skid into a crash.

Sheila: But had I done that, we wouldn’t be having this lovely conversation. ‘Cause I’d have been run over instead, the car, the bumper pinned my left leg in between my bike and the bumper. My body [00:05:00] landed on the hood. My head hit the windshield. When my head hit the windshield, I was knocked unconscious.

Sheila: It was a major intersection, so there were many this is part of some head trauma. I lose my words from time to time witnesses that saw what happened at the accident and my body went airborne. I did two full somersaults. The impact was with such force that both of my boots flew off.

Sheila: When I landed, I landed on my right side, crushing my right leg from the hip down. And my head flew back and it smashed on the pavement. The helmet spun off. I was conscious again. So boy did I stick that landing.

Kelly: Cannot even imagine.

Sheila: You mentioned earlier, and it’s true, because I lived it. I forget sometimes how many miracles the Lord has walked through with me and carried me through so much stuff.

Sheila: But I love [00:06:00] that even though I may be this heavy rock that has crashed into the waters, I’ve crashed into his waters. And when it splashes, you never know where that water’s gonna go and who it’s gonna affect and the lives it’s gonna touch. I don’t like being the heavy, hard rock. It really can be difficult.

Sheila: But God is good no matter what. Amen. So back to the night of the accident, when I went airborne, landed on my right side, crushed my right side. I was conscious again, my husband got to me and he was an officer with the fire department, so he just went into first responder mode and held cervical traction and assessed the scene and so and so forth.

Sheila: Well, in that situation, all my senses were really, really heightened. Everything. Like, I could smell stuff, I could taste stuff. I could hear things that were just insane. I could feel, I could hear people’s clothing move on their body. It was weird, [00:07:00] some of the stuff that, that just transpired, but I think I understand now a little bit more the physical reason why of that, because my body was literally crushed from the hips down both sides.

Sheila: As I laid on the pavement, I didn’t feel a thing. I felt no pain whatsoever. And so, so many people say, well, you must have gone into shock. But I knew those guys that were at the scene. I knew my paramedics, I knew the, the different firefighters. And we had conversations just like this.

Sheila: And many of them I interviewed later for the book, but you know, nobody said that. I went into shock because I carried on great conversations, so and so forth. I responded normally. I believe that that was another miracle that the Lord protected me from the pain.

Sheila: He stopped that pain. I, I don’t know the hows, I don’t know the whys, just that he took care of it. So as I laid there, all of a sudden I started thinking, I was hearing crazy things, like where’s her leg? And [00:08:00] oh, it’s a girl, and all these things. So I laid there and I thought, wait a minute.

Sheila: I’ve just had a really bad accident. Why don’t I feel anything? And that kind of went through my head as to what happened, what’s wrong with me, I have a little brother, a younger brother who for 30 years was a quadriplegic from a swimming accident, and I watched my parents struggle through that situation.

Sheila: Having a child go through such trauma. And so as I laid there, I said, okay, Lord. I started one of those barter prayers. You know, we all do ’em. We all get in a pickle and we are like, okay, Lord. Here we go. I’ll do this if you’ll do this. We tried that whole barter thing,

Sheila: Mine went something like this.

Sheila: Lord,

Sheila: if this is the case,

Sheila: if I’m paralyzed. Take me now.

Sheila: Take me now.

Sheila: Don’t do this to mama and daddy. They’ve got enough. It was hard on them

Sheila: with,

Sheila: with my little brother, please don’t do this. And as I finished my prayer, I felt a touch on [00:09:00] my right forearm.

Sheila: And as I looked up, oh, by the way, when anybody else at the scene touched me, I would just like cringe and writhe. That’s when I felt pain, but it was almost like an electrical shock. When I felt this touch,

Sheila: it was just calm and peace. And I also felt as if I was being cradled in the lap of,

Sheila: I tell people it’s very similar to like, oh, like your Grammy or somebody that you just love and adore.

Sheila: They’re gonna hold you and they’re gonna hug you, and you just know that’s the bestest love ever. Okay. Nothing compared to laying in the lap of

Sheila: the Lord.

Sheila: Nothing like that. When we, when I, when I, I was in the middle of the intersection,

I’m laying in the lap

Sheila: of the,

of the Lord and I feel this touch on my right for forearm.

Sheila: I look over and I look up into the most incredible face. I’ll never forget the eyes. And I’m looking at Jesus. I’m looking at my Lord and Savior,

and I’m like, oh my [00:10:00] gosh. Well, and I don’t like this word. The word is, I use the word atmosphere. It’s weird to me ’cause it doesn’t seem like it’s a quality enough word, but.

Sheila: Everything shifted all around me. And this beautiful sapphire blue color just kind of radiated this atmosphere of peace and wow. That’s the Holy Spirit. That is the Holy Spirit. And interestingly enough, over the years when I’ve done different research on other near death experiences and stuff, that’s really common.

Sheila: The blue light. But that blue atmosphere was beautiful and one of my brands, or my main brand is the Blue Morpho butterfly, because that butterfly represents the coloring of what comes off the Holy Spirit, but magnify it to infinity because we don’t have, the words, we don’t have the language to be able to express what, what the presence of the Lord is. How. [00:11:00] I just can’t wait for heaven. , I can’t wait to see what all it’s gonna be because I got that one little nugget. I’m craving more. So here I’m laying in the lap of God.

Sheila: Jesus is right beside me. The atmosphere changes with the Holy Spirit. And I’m thinking, please, if this is it, take me now. And Jesus says to me, three really short sentences. Don’t be afraid. We got you and you’re gonna be okay. And y’all The cutest thing. The coolest thing, not cutest, but the coolest thing about that is when he said that to me, he spoke it.

Sheila: I heard it in a southern draw because I’m a southern girl and that’s what I understand. He’s not gonna speak Swahili to me ’cause I don’t speak sw. I can’t hear Swahili, I don’t understand it.

Sheila: And I think’s important for listeners is. The Lord’s gonna talk to you the way that you will listen and the way that yes, you’ll pay attention. The question

Kelly: is, [00:12:00] are you paying attention? I’m gonna interrupt you for just a minute because I, I have said so many times that . God knows how to speak to us in a way we can hear him. And so, so often we will think, oh, I need just the right words to go share the gospel with somebody or one of my kids who doesn’t seem to understand how much Jesus loves them.

Kelly: But we can rest in the assurance that. God knows how to speak to us in a way our hearts can hear him. And I love that God used a southern drawl with you. And that you were surrounded. By so much peace.

Sheila: So as I laid there and he spoke those three short sentences, I had total peace. I still knew what was happening around me and the weird thing is, it’s almost like I was in that cocoon of peace and protection and provision and comfort and love, but yet. Man, it’s like the chaos around me.

Sheila: I mean, you could, you could sense the people were [00:13:00] scared, people were nervous, people were anxious people were mad. I mean, there was all kinds of chaos all around that. But in the presence of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord, y’all, there’s peace.

Kelly: Mm.

Sheila: And I got to experience that in a way that most people don’t get.

Sheila: Why? I don’t know. But I am so very grateful. So as I laid there and he gave me those three short sentences, then all of a sudden he, he is kneeled down on one knee, has his hand on my forearm, but takes his other hand and he starts lifting it up. Now, keep in mind, I’m on the pavement and I’ve got a cervical collar on and I’m not moving.

Sheila: I can’t go anywhere, but I can watch with my eyes. And he is lifting his one hand. It’s like he’s lifting it towards the heavens and I’m thinking, oh. They’re gonna take me. I’m going, i’m going with them. Oh my gosh.

Sheila: Me, me. Oh, and by the way, when they all appeared around me, I’m gonna be honest with y’all, raw, honest. I was like, they really do [00:14:00] exist. Because I don’t know about anybody else, but I think it’s common that sometimes even the greatest Christians will go, is this the whole thing really real or is this just a bunch the biggest hoax in the world, y’all?

Sheila: It’s real., I’m just telling you, there’s. There’s no way around it.

Kelly: God is real. God is real. The triune God.

Sheila: Absolutely. So as I, again, as I laid there, he’s lifting his hands up towards the heaven. I’m thinking, I’m going home. Going to heaven, going with Jesus.

Sheila: Yay. And then all of a sudden I start hearing Wop, wop, it gets louder and louder and louder and thinking, oh, no. It was life flight. The air ambulance had flown in and y’all, there’s no record of them being called. They just happened to be in the area. They just happened to be a trauma crew.

Sheila: They just happened to be female nurses, which comes in handy at a certain point if you read that in the book. And they chose to land on their own now? Yes, they were listening to radio traffic because that’s part of when you’re in the air, you have traffic radio [00:15:00] on. But they made the choice to land on their own.

Sheila: They were there before. An ambulance was there. Before an ambulance arrived. We had to wait on an ambulance to get there, for an ambulance to take me to the chopper. Wow. Miracles, miracles, miracles, miracles, miracles, just kept flowing from then.

Kelly: So I just wanna clarify one thing. When Jesus was beside you and you’re cradled in his arms and he points up, he’s directing your attention to the helicopter that the Lord has summoned for you.

Kelly: Is that correct?

Sheila: Well, initially . I’m thinking, yay, we’re going up to the heavens. And then it was like, oh. We’re not going to the heavens. He’s bringing help and healing to me rather than heavenly healing.

Sheila: I tell people, especially with my tragedy coaching, because of my situation, I’ve had a, a blessing to be able to walk with people who’ve been through some really hard trauma.

Sheila: You know, it can be anything from grief and loss and it can be simple things, but there’s some extreme stuff out there. I’ve worked with sex trafficking victims. With [00:16:00] military veterans. When people hurt, they need somebody that really can relate or understand what they’ve been through.

Kelly: Absolutely.

Sheila: And while hurts aren’t always exact. Hurt is still hurt. And a hurt to somebody may be a paper cut and to another. It may be an amputated limb, but it’s still pain. And I think we need to stop judging people on their levels of pain or levels of trauma or levels of difficulty because we don’t know people’s burdens. We don’t know how heavy those burdens are. Right. We just need to love through it. Yeah.

Kelly: Yes. Love them through it. Absolutely. Well, when you got to the hospital, they did all the immediate stuff you needed. You had surgery. You’ve endured 12, I think surgeries

Sheila: i’ve had there was 11. 11 in the beginning. Yeah.

Kelly: And you were rebuilt from both hips down. You’ve been in constant pain and it’s been difficult to control. You were in times when you were fighting for your life. I, as I said previously, it’s. [00:17:00] Unbelievable to imagine how hard this could have been.

Kelly: And I know we can’t tell the whole story. But I’d love for you to , pull out some highlights and then also just explain how you found comfort in some of those darkest times

Sheila: kelly, I think for me that’s always, it’s a fascinating question when people ask that, you know?

Sheila: ’cause I get asked quite a bit, like, how, how do you do this? How? Yeah. And you know what’s interesting is from the very beginning of when, I was comatose. ’cause they kept me in a comatose state. But I do remember. Even when I was quote unconscious, I could still hear what was going on around me.

Sheila: I could sense in the hospital rooms, in the ICU and in the pit and all the different places that I was at throughout the hospital. ‘Cause the accident happened September. I came home sometime in November, so there was a lot of craziness there. And then I had several weeks at a time.

Sheila: I would go back for more surgeries and more situations or infections and things. But I didn’t have [00:18:00] the luxury to say, why, God, why? My whole mentality of thought process, all I had strength for was how, how am I gonna do this? How are we gonna get through this? How is that gonna work?

Sheila: How, how am I gonna breathe? How am I gonna go potty? How am I gonna, I mean all the like really raw things that a human has to do just for our body to function. It’s. It’s been challenging. I won’t lie. It’s not an easy road. I would not wish it for anybody. But I also tell people that I would never want to trade.

Sheila: Brand new Barbie doll legs. Oh, and by the way, I was in the best shape of my life when the accident happened. I was an incredible athlete. I did anywhere from five to eight miles a day, and I did five Ks, 10 Ks halves. I was training for my first half and got the shirt but I didn’t get to compete.

Sheila: But what do you do with [00:19:00] that? You know, when you are always on the go and always on the run and life is just moving wonderfully and then. Crash. Yeah. And it literally flattened me. I was flattened. My life was flattened. People around me didn’t know what to do with that.

Sheila: I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have the bandwidth , in my. Cognitive thought mentally, emotionally, I tell people, especially with my tragedy coaching, I work with emotional, mental, relational, spiritual, and physical trauma because those areas really mess with all of us in some capacity.

Sheila: And it typically, if you have a problem in one. It’s gonna trickle over because there’s always residual effects to everything. So unfortunately in the very beginning, especially the first year, maybe two years, I only had the capacity to Lord, how, how do I get through [00:20:00] this? How do I, like, for four months, my legs were straight out in front of me.

Sheila: The only thing I could move was my right toes. That was it.

Sheila: Hmm. So,

Sheila: so. I did not become an amputee immediately. I shouldn’t say that. Let’s back that up. The limb was amputated at the scene of the accident. They found it up inside my chaps. And when I landed at Vanderbilt, the world renowned hospital in Nashville the trauma surgeon that was on call was a newbie.

Sheila: And God orchestrated that because he stood up to his superior, his. His superior, the head of ortho trauma had told him, take it off at the hip. That’s the only way she’s gonna have a chance to survive. Both my femoral arteries were severed. They, I bled out at the scene, they lost me in the chopper. I mean, we had all kinds of things that I found out later.

Sheila: And so he’s the one that said, you know, you’re probably right. She probably won’t make it through the night, but I really think I can put this [00:21:00] leg back on. So I wanna give it a try. Well, praise God that he did because , had he not put that back on, and I had all those reconstructive surgeries on both sides, I was able to learn to walk again.

Sheila: Unfortunately, I got MRSA two weeks before the first anniversary of the accident and for those that don’t know, that’s a deadly staph infection. And it not only was in the bone, it was in my bloodstream and we were within an hours of.

Sheila: Losing my life again. There’s this section of several weeks that I don’t recall again because of all of that infection. The funny thing about infection, it messes with everything. And again, God protects us from things until we still have to deal with that. It’s kind of like when we have bad luggage and we have yucky stuff in our past, we can put it in a suitcase and put it away.

Sheila: There comes a day when you start healing of other things, you’re gonna have to deal with that [00:22:00] because otherwise it starts rotting and causing more problems. Just like what happened to my limb, it wasn’t clean enough and it started rotting and the infection set in, and so we, they. I, I knew this from the very moment that the accident happened, that there was a chance that I wasn’t gonna survive and that we would have to take the limb anyway.

Sheila: So I was prepared in some regards a year later when we had to take it. I have a dear friend that had struggled with a motorcycle accident and he’s had 30 or 40 surgeries to keep a limb and he’s fought his entire life for decades. I didn’t wanna walk that life. I knew what that looked like, so I wanted to try a different journey.

Sheila: Again, neither one or easy, it’s just what happened to work for me. So as I pray and pray, it’s always how Lord. How, how do I do this? And I have to like break it down into little bitty things. [00:23:00] How do I get from this chair to that bed? How can I go to the bathroom on my own? How can I. Tend to my own needs.

Sheila: Y’all, I didn’t get to have a shower for like 48 days. We found entertaining ways to do stuff. But hardships not easy for anybody. But I think it’s important that we stay anchored in the only one. There’s only one

Sheila: so in my world, everything was always chaotic, and I could, again, I could sense when my friends, when my family, would walk into the room and it’d be like, you could just see it on their face, just they felt horrible for me.

Sheila: I didn’t need that. I already knew my body was a mess. So I encourage people that when you or your friends or family are in the ick, don’t join them. In the ick. Bring light to the darkness. Scripture tells us to do that. Bring light. Bring light.

Kelly: And , that’s what I feel [00:24:00] like you do too. When you share your story that you do bring light into other people’s lives. Yes. It’s been hard and it’s helpful to understand how challenging it was because then that gives us the thought that, wow, that I can do this too.

Kelly: I can say I don’t know how. And I feel like many times in my life when I have felt the most overwhelmed that that was my prayer. Also, God, I don’t know how. I can’t do this. I can’t. And then he would just draw an near and say, but I can.

Sheila: Exactly. Because the why doesn’t really matter. It’s not gonna change the outcome.

Sheila: And you know, the whole journey, I think we’re getting close to 14 years and it’s not been easy. All of those years I had horrific losses, not just physical losses.

Sheila: I lost my marriage. I lost my home. I lost work. I lost friends, I mean friends that I had for decades. And some of that is, you know, [00:25:00] it’s not really their fault, but they don’t know how to be a friend to a single woman, a single again woman, or I even had some, a couple of friends that. They were just really freaked out by the heavy trauma that my physical body went through.

Sheila: They couldn’t physically see. Me in that state. They can now, you know, yeah, it took many, many years. But yeah, it took me four years before I could walk on my own. And all those numerous surgeries. And I’ve had setbacks and setbacks and then joyful forward launches and, but there are so many beautiful lessons in the shadowed valley seasons.

Kelly: Yeah. I’m gonna ask you a couple things. So I’d really like you to explain number one, what it means that you’re a high trauma survivor. So tell me about what life is like for you now, and then I wanna go back to how you learned how to read the Bible again because of the head trauma.

Kelly: I found that fascinating. I mean, the Lord is so good. So talk to [00:26:00] us, first of all about your diagnosis and, and where you are today. Okay. Just so we can understand.

Sheila: Yeah. So initially, within the first three years, I had 11 surgeries to keep or rebuild or maintain what I had left of my limbs.

Sheila: The medical world compares my injuries to somebody that has stepped on an IED. And for those that don’t know what that is, that’s the explosives that are used in military in bombing and in wars. So I can really talk shop with the guys at the va or veterans. We can really talk shop.

Sheila: So I live in a state of. Something’s always in pain, always. It took many years for me to realize that the drugs and medications outside of the head injury they never diagnosed me with a TBI. But there, I believe that there was enough of a trauma there that when it was compounded with. All the years of heavy drugs that really [00:27:00] messed with my cognitive.

Sheila: I’m grateful that I journaled through most all of that. So even though I live in some kind of pain every day, we have tried years and years of different kinds of physical therapy. Brain remapping. My body does really well with a lot of brain remapping. There are physical ways of doing brain remapping. And then there’s also, like mental tricks that you can play with your brain. Like my little service dog, she actually is now being trained to recognize when I have phantom pains. And for those folks that don’t know what that is, that is pain where you don’t have a limb or where you don’t have a body part, for example. I don’t have anything below my knee, so most people like diabetics have what we call clean amputations. Clean means that surgically, somebody’s gone in, they schedule it and they take it off and make it as tight and pretty as they can be.

Sheila: Unfortunately, with a high trauma amputee, [00:28:00] mine is if they put it in a blender. And pulled it back out, put it back on, had to reconfigure. It’s been redone a couple of times, so, there’s just so much of a train wreck there that it’s hard to work with. So the fact that I can walk it all again, another miracle.

Sheila: Currently I actually walk with just the prosthetic. There are times when I walk with crutches as well. Especially in crowds. More than anything, I’ll take one crutch because if somebody bumps me it’s kind of like I tell people, stand in the middle of the room and lift your foot up and just stand there.

Sheila: Most people can’t do it for a full minute without dropping a limb. But I tell people that if you drop that toe, you’ve just fallen. That’s my world.

Sheila: So there can be an ice chip that falls out of the ice machine, and. If the prosthetic hits it, I can be on the floor and not even know it because there’s so much damage, it takes a while for the electrical neuron process [00:29:00] in the brain to, to reach all of that.

Sheila: Okay, that’s good to understand. Thank you. . Now talk to us about the Bible. So you used to love to read the Bible.

Sheila: Then what happened and how did you get it back?

Sheila: I actually enjoyed reading. I enjoyed reading and I’ve always journaled especially as a younger person. But journaling became therapy for me because in the middle of the night, everybody else kind of closes down. My mind wouldn’t stop.

Sheila: So I would write and write and write. I wanted to read and I couldn’t. You know, I couldn’t remember the stories of Noah and the Arc. I couldn’t remember Jesus and the manger. I couldn’t remember Children’s Bible stories and. That scared me. What’s happened in this brain of mine? And so I tried reading and I didn’t even realize that I was rereading the same sentence or the same paragraph for.

Sheila: Like 10 minutes, I’d keep reading the same thing. I couldn’t re retain any of it. So somebody had [00:30:00] suggested to me, well, why don’t you try a kid’s picture bible, and I said. Okay. And y’all, I mean, laying in the hospital I was used to, letting somebody take care of everything. So the idea of a full grown woman going back to a picture book. It didn’t bother me at all. I thought, okay, if that’s where I gotta start, that’s where we gotta start.

Sheila: And so I I started looking at the pictures in a children’s picture Bible, and little by little those memories started coming forward. Again, that’s another technique, if you will, of brain remapping because it’s there. I just had to figure out a way for me to be able to bring it forward.

Sheila: You know that Jesus taught brain remapping. He was the first one to teach that. Remember he told Paul, or excuse me, he asked Peter, he said, Peter you know, you’re gonna deny me what he said three times. You’re gonna deny me three times. Well, then a few days later, Jesus asked him, how many times does he ask Peter

Sheila: [00:31:00] if he loves?

Sheila: Three times?

Sheila: Three times. Three times. And the reason being is because. God’s God is trying to help all of us replace us from the painful thoughts and memories in our past and create a beautiful new one. And that’s, that’s what Brain remapping is. And so with my reading and studying , with the kids’ Bible, it helped those stories kind of like come back to the front.

Sheila: So I did that for a while and then I finally just started reading a small children’s bible and then the message version and so on so forth.

Sheila: And I think I’m, I think I’m now up to probably, I think maybe the eighth different version and I try and read through a different version every year. So that’s amazing.

Sheila: Thank you. God.

Sheila: Yes. Yes.

Sheila: Well, one of the things that I thought would be helpful for our listeners is that you said your leg, your designer legs are not your identity, and you try to help people understand why are you trying so hard to fit in when you’re born to stand out.

Sheila: God [00:32:00] created you unique, so could you talk to us about that? Absolutely.

Sheila: I truly believe that the Lord chooses each one of us and he is chosen us even before we were born. And he knew that this was all gonna happen and I rarely, if ever, cover my prosthetic, and it truly is my foot in the door to share his story.

Sheila: My story through his, and the thing I’ve also learned is even for those people that may not wanna hear about Jesus, y’all realize that most people in the world today, that the only Bible they will ever read is you and I. It’s like our actions, our responses, the way we walk out life. That’s the Bible that most people will see today.

Sheila: So for me, when the Lord has called me to this, it’s like, just show ’em. Show ’em that while this life isn’t easy. Man with him, it’s possible way possible. [00:33:00] Like I said, I would not wanna trade Barbie Dre brand new legs, a bazillion dollars or anything like that for the journey that I’ve had and for all that I’ve been through.

Sheila: And I used to have what I would call a check the box religion. You know, I was there two or three times a week and I’d tithe once in a while or whatever, you know, but now. It’s truly a relationship. And according to the Bible, that’s what God wants of us. The Lord wants us to have a relationship with him.

Sheila: He doesn’t want all those check the box religion things that manmade stuff. He wants our hearts. And so I’m just grateful that he’s chosen me to walk it out. Not easy but possible. Not easy but

Kelly: possible. Amen.

Kelly: Sheila, one of the things that was really hard to read about in the book was that the woman that hit you never took responsibility even though she did receive a ticket and she was at fault, but yet she never apologized. And then just because of a bunch of [00:34:00] things, you never got any money at all to help pay for your vast amount of medical bills.

Kelly: And she never said she was sorry. She was never kind. And so I’m just wondering, how did you forgive her? I mean, every day there is an opportunity for you to have become bitter, but you didn’t. Sure. So how did you deal with that?

Sheila: I think that what I learned through my entire process is that.

Sheila: Hard stuff’s hard, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to carry any more ick. My wagon was broken. I had two wheels that were oodle and to pile on more stuff. I, I was still trying to figure out how do I get the stuff out of the wagon I’ve got that doesn’t function. I just, I couldn’t take on any of that extra stuff.

Sheila: Now when I did sit face to face with the other driver and they denied everything, and they actually literally turned point blank and said it was my fault. I got physically sick, and my [00:35:00] attorney had to call a, oh, it’s not timeout. There’s a word, but recess. That’s it.

Sheila: It was anything but a fun recess. And I learned when I did look at the individual, God gave me this really interesting vision. You know, at Easter time you get those chocolate bunnies and you’re like, Ooh, yay, a chocolate bunny. And then you break it and you’re like, Ooh, it’s hollow. What a rip.

Sheila: I felt like I was looking at, all I saw was an empty shell of a body and. The inside of her heart, she had bigger things to deal with than the fact that she was at fault and chose not to take responsibility or accountability for her actions.

Sheila: I later found out some of the, , cult practices that she and her family were involved in. And so she’s got way bigger things. I remembered looking at my legal pad sitting there in the conference or in the room when we were, going through legal stuff and I had written across the top of it [00:36:00] and I was actually praying for her in Penn and

Sheila: journaling, praying for her because I saw how dark. Her world is, and that’s I think, something important for all of our listeners and for us that we don’t know the walks that people have been through. We don’t know what brings people to this moment and this choice and this action. While I’m not justifying and saying what she did and how the lack of, if that’s okay.

Sheila: ’cause it’s not right. But I can’t take that on. I’m okay, even though it’s not okay. Yeah. ’cause of the Lord, I will be okay. He’s gonna take care of the other and he’s gonna have, she’s gonna have to deal with him as far as. The choices she’s making. We all have to,

Kelly: right? Yeah. Right. Well, that’s, that was so gracious of the Lord, and it was quite obvious from your story that you were able to forgive her right away, even though at times you would bring it before the Lord, but you did not hold bitterness, and you did not hold unforgiveness in your heart [00:37:00] at all.

Kelly: You were able to just give that to Jesus it seemed.

Sheila: Kelly. And that’s true. But what’s fascinating and what I’ve learned, like I said, it’s been, you know, more than a decade now, is that, ooh, Satan will bring that up every now and then. You know, he’ll just like tempt me with different things. Like, well, if she would’ve taken care of this, or if the insurance would’ve covered that, or if you would’ve gotten a settlement and you wouldn’t have to work so hard and you wouldn’t have to struggle so much.

Sheila: Um, to try and like pick at a scab and I’m like. That’s a scar. It’s not a scab. You can’t get to it anymore. Oh, I love that. And when light hits, when light hits scars, and most people may not know this, but when light hits scars, they actually show up really white. They show up. Really kind of pretty. So yeah, I just, I don’t have the bandwidth to hang onto all that.

Sheila: Ick. I just don’t. Absolutely. Thank you. That’s so powerful.

Kelly: so is there a particular verse that anchored you to God more than anything else throughout [00:38:00] this experience?

Kelly: So

Sheila: in the very beginning, I, it was so sad. Again, my brain wasn’t functioning well. All I could think of was be still, I’m like, well, I can’t move, so that works. But my life verse has become Romans 1212, which is to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction.

Sheila: And faithful in prayer. Cause if we maintain hope, we can have joy. And if we rely on him through all the hard stuff and faithfully pray if we walk out in faithful obedience. Oh, again. It’s not easy. I live this life as a single girl, no children, real, no family in this area. And the Lord just provides, but I trust him to provide, I know that he will, and I also know that I can’t do it.

Sheila: I can’t. Yeah.

Sheila: Even that inner 2-year-old that says, I do it, can’t do it.

Kelly: That’s right. Well, [00:39:00] the verse you mentioned first was be still and know that I am God. And that’s what you would think of a lot when you were laying in the hospital bed and also the experience that you had with Jesus drawing so near and just re remembering the beauty and peace of his presence.

Kelly: Well, let’s just close with, one of the things you say is, I live every day as a miracle, because for me it is, and I think that’s a beautiful way Just to sum up everything you’ve shared. So Sheila, how can people get in touch with you and find out about your other books?

Sheila: The easiest way to, to get in touch with me and follow me is my website, which is sheila preston fitzgerald.com.

Sheila: It’s also the same on the social media sites. But the first book one Foot in Heaven. Which is the one that you referred to earlier. And then I have a new series that actually launches next week. I’m so excited. And it’s titled Footnotes Adventures with Jesus. And [00:40:00] because I don’t hide my limitation.

Sheila: People come to me, I swear I’ve got a bumper sticker on my head that says, tell me your story. But people come to me all the time no matter where I am. And I call ’em adventures with Jesus because they’re encounters with him in everyday moments, and they are beautiful stories that have been turned into devotions and we’re getting incredible feedback.

Sheila: So I’m excited to see what God has planned for footnotes, adventures with Jesus.

Kelly: That’s excellent. Sheila, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today and share your story. You’re so

Sheila: welcome. Thank you.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope [00:41:00] podcast.